ASP.NET GridView Data Caching

Continuing my ASP.NET GridView Tips and Tricks series, here’s another one that shows how to adopt a caching mechanism in the ASP.NET GridView.

When it comes to caching data in the GridView, most developers do the mistake of caching the entire page. Now if you have an ASP.NET Page with a UserControl containing a GridView, and you have enabled OutputCaching on the entire page, then the functionality will work as expected, if the GridView does not have paging enabled.

However if the GridView has paging enabled on a page that uses OutputCaching and you try to navigate through the pages, you will find that the GridView behaves erratically.

So in order to enable caching on an ASP.NET GridView, use data caching on the DataSource. Here’s how to do it using the SqlDataSource.EnableCaching and ObjectDataSource.EnableCaching property respectively:

If GridView is bound to SQLDataSource

<asp:SqlDataSource ID="objProduct" runat="server"
ConnectionString="<%$ ConnectionStrings:NorthwindConnectionString %>"
SelectCommand="SELECT [ProductID], [ProductName] FROM [Product]"
EnableCaching="true" CacheDuration="3000" >         
</asp:SqlDataSource>

As quoted in the MSDN documentation: The SqlDataSource control supports data caching. While data is cached, the Select method retrieves data from the cache rather than from the underlying database. When the cache expires, the Select method retrieves data from the underlying database, and then caches the data again.

If GridView is bound to ObjectDataSource

<asp:ObjectDataSource ID="objProduct" runat="server" 
   SelectMethod="GetProduct" SelectCountMethod="GetProductCount"
   EnablePaging="True" TypeName="Product"
   EnableCaching="true" CacheDuration="3000" >

As quoted in the MSDN documentation: The ObjectDataSource control supports data caching. While data is cached, calls to the Select method retrieve data from the cache rather than the ObjectDataSource creating an instance of the business object and calling its data method. When the cache expires, the Select method retrieves data from the business object, and then caches the data again.

Depending on your application, this simple trick can improve the performance of your application.

Note: The HTML markup is not cached when using this technique.

Read some more GridView Tips and Tricks over here